A few months ago at around
1:00am, I walked into my bedroom, flicked on the light switch as I usually do 4
or 5 times a night, and before I could take one more step, I had to stop
abruptly in my tracks. I couldn’t see
anything - total darkness. As I stood there staring into space, I realized that
all the years of faithful service I took for granted from my little ceiling
light had finally ended.
The next morning, after some
quick troubleshooting, I realized it was not just a bulb problem, but something
internal within the fixture. My mind jumped to 3
traditional options: “Should I go out and buy a whole new fixture?”, “Should I
call an electrician and make an appointment?”, and finally “How can I find that
little paper manual that came with the light so many years ago?” After I
briefly pondered some of these less desirable options, I decided to think more
creatively, take to social media, and turn it into a more engaging
Do-It-Yourself opportunity. Succeed or fail, it has to be better than waiting
around or putting it off - and maybe I’d learn something interesting along the
way.
I sat down in front of my PC,
typed in a search for “how to fix a ceiling fan and light fixture” and within minutes of clicking around I found posts with questions, answers and directions addressing my specific
fixture. One even linked me to a how-to
video of someone replacing the exact same switch step by step. I cued it up, readied my mouse between play
and pause and stepped up on my stool to start working.
One hour later I was done.
While I always appreciated
the potential value of social media as
an on-the-job training tool, it wasn’t until I started playing out specific
scenarios (like the one described above) that I began to fully grasp the
real potential return on investment of using them in the workplace. Read more about how I measured the impact of tapping into social media and take away some ideas about how you might start measuring this important resource within your own organizations...
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